The effect of aging and cognitive decline on spatial and temporal cognition
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Date
2017
Authors
Ranjbar Pouya, Omid
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Abstract
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most challenging health conditions in our century. While there is yet no cure for this degenerative disease, the earlier it is diagnosed and treated, the more effective the treatment could be. Studies show AD-related neuro-pathological changes occur years before detectable clinical symptoms appear. Therefore, a number of computer-based cognitive tests have been designed to measure different cognitive abilities such as working memory or associative memory in older adults. However, the early effects of dementia on particular aspects of spatial and temporal cognition, such as spatial encoding/updating and explicit time perception, has not received similar attention. We hypothesized that spatial encoding/updating and explicit timing are among the early symptoms of the onset of AD and can provide reliable and accurate measures for detecting the onset of cognitive decline. Thus, we designed and conducted several Virtual Reality experiments to assess human spatial encoding, spatial updating and explicit timing in different aging groups. Two new accuracy-based measures were also introduced in this work: error score for assessing spatial orientation and signed error for assessing explicit timing. The significant correlations between the participants’ performance and their age and cognitive scores supported the validity of the designed measures. The conducted experiments revealed significant differences between the performances of younger and older adults, and between high- and low-cognitive functioning participants in spatial encoding, spatial updating and explicit timing tests. These results encourage development of predictive models for differentiating between cognitively-intact and cognitively declined older adults based on their performance in the spatial and temporal tests.
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Keywords
Aging, Cognitive decline, Spatial cognition, Temporal cognition, Virtual reality, Spatial encoding, Spatial updating, Explicit timing, Montreal cognitive assessment, Error score, Signed error, Evaluation metrics, Alzheimer's disease